10. Yunus

It is the law of God that when an individual performs a praiseworthy deed, it is immediately included in the record of his deeds. But if he commits an act which warrants punishment, God gives him respite so that better counsel should prevail, and he may at some point reform himself. This law of God is a great mercy to human beings; otherwise man is a great transgressor and is always ready to perform evil deeds, and if people were immediately seized upon for their evil deeds, their lives would very soon come to an end and the face of the earth would become devoid of human existence. Those who lead their lives as if they are not required to face God after death, live with arrogance in this world. They are those who lead their lives free of the fear of God’s scourge, thinking that they are at liberty to practice as much deceit and spread as much chaos as they like. The fact is that man should realise that there is one Power over and above all powerful ones—every man is helpless before Him— He will one day seize upon all human beings and everybody will be compelled to accept His verdict.

The system of this world is so designed that from time to time man is hit by some calamity or accident. He begins to realise that he is absolutely helpless against external forces. At that time he spontaneously starts calling upon God; he admits his humbleness compared to God’s Power. But, he is humble only so long as he is in trouble. The moment he gets relief from trouble, he becomes as negligent and arrogant as he was earlier. God does not accept the obeisance of such people, because only that obeisance is acceptable which is offered in a free atmosphere. Obeisance offered under the pressure of compelling circumstances has no value in the eyes of God. Man is a creature who likes justification. He seeks justification for every action of his. If a man chooses to be arrogant, his mentality will be inclined towards that. He will, in practice indulge in arrogance, and his mind will provide him with beautiful words in order to prove his arrogance justified. This is known as taz’in. Man expresses his misdeeds in beautiful words and is satisfied that he is in the right. But, this is like a man holding a burning lump of coal in his hand and thinking that it will not burn him simply because he calls it a red flower.

The prophets addressed their communities with clear arguments, (baiyinat), but they did not accept them. This shows that the missionary call—given on behalf of God—rests on the basis of reasoning. People have to recognize the prophet at the level of arguments and reasoning. Those who want to find him basking in outward glories surrounded with huge numbers of supporters will never be able to find him, because he will not be there at all. The prophet does not perform miracles, but engages rather in the process of argument. At the stage of the missionary call, all work is done on this basis. Individuals and groups transgress in not recognizing the Divine call appearing in the form of arguments or reasoning. They reject it, not having found it in accordance with their self-devised standards. Due to this behaviour, such people are punished by the law of God. The communities of the past which had incurred God’s retribution for their rejection of the prophets, were not actually total rejectors of prophethood. All these communities had accepted some prophet or the other of earlier periods, but they rejected the prophet of their own times. In the case of the earlier prophets, the corroborative historical facts had accumulated to back them. They had become objects of national prestige, and public predilections favoured them, while the contemporary prophet was as yet devoid of all such additional attributes. They recognised that past prophet who had as a result of tradition over the generations, become their national prophet, and connecting with him was synonymous with linking themselves with a tower of greatness. They recognised their national prophet as such, and rejected that prophet who could be recognised only through his reasoning and arguments. In the eyes of God, this was such a serious crime that those who were declared to be rejecters of the prophet were destroyed.

‘Then We made you their successors (khala’if, sing. khalifah) in the land.’ The real meaning of khalifah is ‘one who comes afterwards’. This word ‘successor’ is specially used for coming into power after another. This succession is in relation to human beings and not in relation to God. In the Quran, wherever the word khilafah has been used, it is in connection with succession to some creature and not in connection with succession to God. Making somebody a successor is solely for the purpose of putting him to the test and is not meant to confer any honour. Making somebody a successor means giving one an opportunity to work after another; it is placing one community in the arena of testing in place of another community. For example, in India, the native Rajas were replaced by Mughals. Then they were removed and the Britishers were made their successors. Later, they (the British) were made to leave the country, making way for the majority community. In all these cases, the ‘one coming afterwards’ was the successor (khalifah) of the earlier one.

The Quraysh of Makkah believed in God and the Prophet. They claimed to be the followers of the cult of Abraham (Ibrahim). So much so that many of the religious terms of Islam, for example, salat (prayers), sawm (fasting), zakat (alms-giving), hajj (pilgrimage), etc. are the same as had already been prevalent among them. In spite of this, why did they insist that they would accept the Quran only if it were replaced or amended? The reason for this was that the Quran enshrined God’s pure religion, while the Quraysh had adopted an adulterated variant of it in the name of God’s religion. A blow was dealt to their polytheistic concept of God by the Quranic principle of the oneness of God. In the light of the Quranic concept of prayer and obeisance to God, their prayer appeared to be simply child’s play. They had made the prophet the sign of national prestige, while the Quran wanted them to accept and follow a prophet who had to be given the status of a guide in all practical matters. They had taken it for granted that their service to the Ka‘bah was the greatest proof of their righteousness, whereas the Quran said that righteousness prevails when a man has the fear of God in his heart and, keeping the Hereafter in view, acts accordingly. A man mouths pious sounding words but ignores the Truth. The reason for this is that, at heart, he has no scruples. If a man is scrupulous enough to realise that he is answerable to God for all his utterances and deeds, he will immediately become serious, and a person who is serious will look at matters realistically. He cannot ignore moral questions or look at them in a superficial manner.

The Quraysh of Makkah believed in God and the Prophet. They claimed to be the followers of the cult of Abraham (Ibrahim). So much so that many of the religious terms of Islam, for example, salat (prayers), sawm (fasting), zakat (alms-giving), hajj (pilgrimage), etc. are the same as had already been prevalent among them. In spite of this, why did they insist that they would accept the Quran only if it were replaced or amended? The reason for this was that the Quran enshrined God’s pure religion, while the Quraysh had adopted an adulterated variant of it in the name of God’s religion. A blow was dealt to their polytheistic concept of God by the Quranic principle of the oneness of God. In the light of the Quranic concept of prayer and obeisance to God, their prayer appeared to be simply child’s play. They had made the prophet the sign of national prestige, while the Quran wanted them to accept and follow a prophet who had to be given the status of a guide in all practical matters. They had taken it for granted that their service to the Ka‘bah was the greatest proof of their righteousness, whereas the Quran said that righteousness prevails when a man has the fear of God in his heart and, keeping the Hereafter in view, acts accordingly. A man mouths pious sounding words but ignores the Truth. The reason for this is that, at heart, he has no scruples. If a man is scrupulous enough to realise that he is answerable to God for all his utterances and deeds, he will immediately become serious, and a person who is serious will look at matters realistically. He cannot ignore moral questions or look at them in a superficial manner.

The events that occur in this world of ours seem, outwardly, to be the result of certain material causes, but the reality is that God’s control and management have been the underlying factors in all these events. In this world nobody has any personal or intrinsic power at all. A man is a monotheist (believing in the oneness of God) if he goes beyond the outwardly apparent phenomena and reaches the invisible God through them. As opposed to this, he is a polytheist (believing in partners to God) if he can go no further than outwardly apparent phenomena and if he confers on created things the status of their Creator. In this world nobody except God has the power to grant benefits or to inflict harm. A person who realises this truth devotes all his attention to God. He worships only God; he fears only Him and reposes his hopes in Him alone; he makes the one and only God his all. Unlike him, those who are preoccupied by mere things, make somebody other than God their God, according to their inclinations, and attach to these false gods such hopes and fears as should have been directed towards the one and only God. One form of these wrongful ideas is the belief in ‘recommendation.’ People suppose that there are some superior beings among human beings and among creatures other than human beings, who are holy in the eyes of God; God hears their recommendation and on the basis of this, He takes a decision about granting worldly provision and salvation in the after-life. But this kind of belief is false; it amounts to an underestimation of God’s godliness. God is free of every kind of shirk (imputing partners to God). No such belief befits the image of the qualities of God as is introduced and projected by the immense universe created by Him. Any such belief would mean that God is not what He seems to be in the mirror of His creative attributes, or that there is a contradiction in His attributes. Obviously, neither of these alternatives is possible.

God initially grounded human existence in the religion of nature. At that time, the religion of all humanity was one and the same. But, people had their differences and devised different forms of religions. The reason for this is the misuse of the freedom given to the people for the purpose of testing them. If God were to reveal Himself, human arrogance would come to an end on observing His powers, and suddenly unity would replace differences, because extremity of fear demolishes a multiplicity of opinions. But God will not intervene in this state of affairs before Judgement Day. God had created the present world for the sake of putting human beings to the test, and to maintain the atmosphere of testing, it is necessary to keep the reality concealed, so that people should have the opportunity to use their wisdom in both right and wrong directions.

When the people of Makkah persisted in their rejections of the Truth, God caused them to be plagued by a famine which went on for seven years. At last it ended, but only after the the Prophet Muhammad had prayed for this. This was a sign from God from which they should have learned the lesson that on rejecting the Prophet, they would come within the ambit of God’s scourge. But their mindset was such that, as long as the famine continued, they kept lamenting and beseeching, but when the famine ended, they started saying, ‘These are the vagaries of the times which occur now and then to everybody. This has nothing to do with the acceptance or rejection of the Prophet.’ People make demands for signs or miracles from the Prophet. But the real question is not that of the occurrence of miracles, but that of learning the lesson that a sign is there for observation and not for compulsion. Even after the appearance of a sign, a man has the option of either accepting it or rejecting it. However, when God’s last sign appears, man will have no power against it. This last sign will appear as God’s retribution after the conclusive phase of the process of dawah and it will appear in different forms for different prophets. In the case of the last of the prophets, the Prophet Muhammad, on the basis of various considerations, this sign took the form of those who deny the truth being overcome and the believers being made to dominate them. When a man indulges in arrogance and this does not seem to cause any harm to him, he becomes more insolent. He thinks that he is beyond God’s grasp, though this is in accordance with God’s plan. God gives an arrogant man a long rope so that he may indulge in extremes of arrogance without any fear; and during this period, God’s agents, in concealment and silence, go on recording his utterances and deeds, until his time is up and the angel of death suddenly appears and catches hold of him in order to present him before God to be judged by Him.